The Night Inside Us
by MattyMoon-239
Summary: A research expedition to the Antarctic uncovers a horrifying secret that could rupture the foundations of human knowledge and extinguish all life in the cosmos.
1. Chapter 1

From where does life come  
And to where does it flow?  
The theses are many  
Myths writ in the snow  
-"Chaos or Cosmos?" by Waino W. Korpela

"Are you?" giggled Blair. He lapsed back into the bunk contorted with silent laughter.  
Connant looked at him blankly. "Huh? Am I what?"  
"Are you there?" Blair burst into gales of laughter. " _Are_ you Connant? The beast wanted to be a man—not a dog."  
-"Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell

 **The Night Inside Us  
1993**

I  
Muller's Prism

The path that led up to the tall house was stony and weather worn, crunching noisily beneath Richard Mclintok's hiking boots. The fading sunlight reflected off the Art Deco façade, darkly varnished red oak and gold paint casting frozen bourbon light onto the driveway and the valley beneath it. He inhaled the chilled mountain air and let it out in a relieved sigh, glad to have reached the end of the trek. Once or twice he slipped over the black ice that had begun creeping over the rock in early November, catching himself at the last moment. He had great respect and admiration for his friend and colleague, and though he himself was no stranger to passing through isolated regions of the world, more than once he'd often wished the man had settled somewhere a bit less remote.

He stepped up onto the porch and wiped mucus from his upper lip, aware of the cold that was worming its way through his system. He knocked on the door, something that looked like it had been hewn from a petrified forest, and waited. A Moravian star fashioned with glass the color of strawberry flesh was hung from the awning's rafters, glimmering in the light and spewing its fiery brilliance onto the porch. It bore his tired gaze with indifference, tilting slowly in the wind. It seemed to him as if everything on Karl's property had been constructed to embody a feeling of warmth, a factor which was lost on the country.

The door opened and an elderly man greeted him, dressed in a brown wool sweater and trousers. He had wild Atlantic grey eyes that denounced the age of their owner, and a shock of wispy hair, which had at one time been blonde, stood out beneath his fisherman's cap. A smile showcased Karl Muller's wall-to-wall teeth the color of ivory, pulling up his pale parchment skin. Richard faintly remembered that skin being darkened by an Egyptian sun and scoured by the stinging sand, but retirement and seclusion to the homeland of his Viking ancestors had bleached that skin back to its original hue. "Richard, _willkommen! Wie geht es dir?_ "

Richard fumbled with his memory in an attempt to remember the smattering of German he'd picked up from Karl. " _Ich_ _bin_ …uh, _mir geht ist gut_. _Sprechen zie Englisch,_ please?"

Karl nodded and held up an apologetic hand. " _Ja, ja_ , I'm sorry. So many things have been happening, many great things, it's difficult to think in a linear fashion. Come in, come in!"

A wave of warm air embraced Richard as he entered the home, fresh dinner smells, meats and fruits, invading his nostrils. It was a nice break from the German autumn outside. He stepped into the foyer and shrugged off his jacket, placing it on one of the pegs set into the wall. As Karl stepped away from the door, Richard noticed that he was walking with a limp, which he compensated with a sturdy diamond willow rod. The older man saw his notice and gave an unashamed shrug. "Gout," he said, and began walking into the open living room. Richard followed him, trying hard and failing to not give away his amazement; this one room on its own seemed larger than his Minneapolis apartment.

Karl Muller's house was what one might expect a retired archeologist's house to look like; a hoarder's delight of antiquities and unique objects that the museums and universities did not want or had to relinquish due to economic concerns. The ceiling rose high to the second floor, the beams of the rafters like the rib bones of a rosewood giant. Expensive and tasteful furniture were scattered around the room in a loose plan, dark silhouettes in the light coming from the great fireplace set into the far wall, which looked like a relic from the eighteenth century. Big windows stared out into the valley. Richard imagined how it would look to someone standing out in the bottom of the valley, two great spheres of witchlight, dragon's eyes in the dark.

"Have a seat," Karl said, and Richard sat down in one of the parallel couches in front of the fireplace, allowing his eyes to roam over every treasure that had been collected from each corner of the earth, pieces of time and human history preserved in solid matter. A series of framed photographs stood upright on the wide black coffee table, along with a short column of books, copies of his collected essays and analyses. Richard leaned forward and grabbed one of the few photographs that was in color, a snapshot of the dig at Giza. He recognized himself off to the far left, half a dozen years younger and less careworn. The man in that photograph was still unaware of his wife's desire for divorce, his daughter's slavery at the cruel grasp of heroin, the identity theft that would strike him like lightning and burn away his trust in his fellow man, all of that looming over him like a monstrous black thunderstorm.

"I have some brandy in the cabinet over here, or have you sworn off drinking entirely?"

Richard turned and saw Karl holding up a crystal decanter swirling with liquid the color of dried blood. "Brandy's fine. As long as you cut it with some ice."

Karl filled a pair of glasses and dropped a few cubes of ice into them. He stepped softly over the ornate rug and offered one to Richard, which he accepted with a polite smile. "Strange that a German wouldn't offer beer instead," he said.

Karl grinned. "Stranger still that a Minnesotan wouldn't accept it."

The old man sat down on the couch opposite him. He rested his birch cane in his lap and sipped at his own glass, turning to look at the fireplace. "Truth be told, we should really be drinking champagne."

"Why's that?"

At this, the old man turned away from the firelight and looked at him, and Richard could see that spark of determination that retirement had done nothing to erase, mingling with the orange light. It shined behind the grey-blue and threatened to consume everything. "I've read your email about the crystals you found in Budapest," the old man said. "I've seen the same things you've seen, the _exact_ same things, all over the world. It is curious what Nature will do when allowed to flourish, is it not? Did the chemical analysis have anything to say?"

Richard shook his head. "Nothing fascinating, really. Straightforward molecular structure, basic carbon chains…they all seem to be normal gemstones."

"And yet they appear to have grown in places where one would not expect such formations to grow."

Richard nodded and sipped at his brandy. He kept his mouth shut, certain that if he responded to that statement he would say something that would grant him a curious and possibly even an incredulous, or in the worst case a _worried_ , expression from his friend. He had tried to convince himself that what he had seen in that forgotten Soviet mine in Budapest was a fake, a reproduction created by the locals to mess around with the outsiders, but seeing the objects, handling them and analyzing the hell out of them, he couldn't even bring himself to say that he was kidding himself. Nature was a strange woman indeed to have created a series of topaz crystals that were otherwise normal, save for the two facts that they did not belong where they were, and that they happened to look like _axes_. Very big _axes_.

Karl tipped Richard a sly wink and reached under one of the throw pillows beside him, taking out a black plastic binder and a small wooden box with a brass clasp. He rearranged the frames and set the two objects on the table in front of Richard, then sat back and gave him an expectant look, pleased with his little trick.

Richard took a deeper swig of the brandy and stared at the two objects with measured distrust.

"Why do I get the feeling that both these things are bad news?" he said.

"I'm not sure, Richard. Maybe it's because you're not willing to take a chance because you're afraid it will only create more problems for you. Maybe listening to all of those stuffed shirts at the university and the _abfall_ they spew has left you contented and stripped you of your lust for your work. Perhaps it was wrong of me to call you here; I'm sure you have some pressing matters at home that need to be seen to, some big project the university has sent you on. I am sure I'm wasting your time, although clearly not very much of your time, since you _did_ come here, after all."

Richard alternated his bitter stare between the old man and his two articles, frustration surging through his skin. Frustration that Karl would be able to frankly speak the thoughts that he had been accumulating for months, and frustration in that he was one hundred percent correct.

Without giving Karl the satisfaction of seeing how much he was right, Richard grabbed the little wooden box and undid the clasp. He was about to open the lid, had opened it so that there was a mere sliver of deepest black intruding into the fireplace glow, when a thought struck him hard enough to still his hand. Not so much a thought as a punctuation of his uncertainty. He had a good job now; a clerk might be seen as a step down from working in the field, really just picking through the scraps of what others find, but it was sound and secure work, away from sociopolitical strife, and he was somewhat loathe to risk it. But on the other hand, what else did he have to lose? At thirty-seven he was still young enough, still spry and sharp enough. He was an archeologist; what reason did he have for not stepping to the rabbit hole, if only to skirt its rim and peer down its depths?

He opened the box's lid and squinted at what it contained. He plucked it from the box and held it in his hand, hefting it and noting just how incredibly _cold_ it was. He looked up at Karl, seeing the old man's studious eyes set in a grin. "Well?" he said.

"Well."

"I don't get it. What's it supposed to be?"

"As I said, Nature is a curious creature. After reading your emails, I was suddenly struck by a memory of a dig I had been part of in the Antarctic, down on the southern shelf. This would be sometime in the late sixties, I should think, around the same time as the Manson trials. Nixon, for all his vanity and paranoia, was a clever man. He knew he had to appease the journalists so as not to make it seem like he was a mere madman with a chessboard, shuffling troops off to wherever he wanted. So he set up a scientific expedition to the Antarctic, with a good supply of media coverage and documentation. It was also a diplomatic feat; foreign scientists were brought in, too."

"That's where you come in?"

Karl nodded and sipped at his brandy. "Mm-hmm. I was working in Canada for the _Technische Universität die Essen_ when I got the call. They had me flown there right from the airport. We set up base camp about ten kilometers north of McMurdo. I've lived through German blizzards, so I thought that I understood what being cold was, but they were nothing. Just bare branches of something colossal. Anyway, we weren't really expected to do anything, just make things look pretty and stay out of the soldiers' way and feed some numbers and facts to the journalists. About three weeks into the pointless mission, I drove the tractor out onto the shelf to replace the perimeter flags. I remember the sun was falling, the sky appearing like a bruised plum, and the wind was like the screaming of children. More brandy?"

Richard nodded without realizing he was doing it. The decanter clinked loudly on his glass, betraying that at least one of them didn't need more brandy but neither cared. Karl turned to look at the fire.

"I was cresting a hill, unaware that I'd been turned around by the mountains. They hemmed in our camp from east to west, you see, and by some damned chance I lost my bearings. No compass, I didn't bring one that time. Once over the hill I saw the storm coming, just a big wall of white, like a pale dragon slowly barreling towards me. Still thinking that I was going in the right direction, I went through it. You'll see nothing like that outside of that desolate, godforsaken place, Richard. Nothing like it. There's no experience you can have that could defend you from a storm of that caliber. The ice was like razor blades, which you could hardly feel anyway. The air was torn from your lungs and taken up into the screaming wind. But I kept going, had to keep going, because if I was going to die it would be under my own circumstances, with my permission. What is a storm to a youthful mind?

"Conversely, what is a youthful mind to a storm? I don't know how far I traveled or for how long, only that I was going somewhere, and surely the storm would give way before the diesel in the tractor. After quite some time, it would seem that Lady Fortune had had enough of me. The tractor struck some object embedded in the snow, ruining the tire and leaving me stranded. Out of desperation and anger, I dismounted and looked at the tire, eager to kick at the rock I had went over. To my surprise, I found that sticking out of the snow."

Karl cast a curious eye at the thing Richard held in his hand. The soft glow from the fireplace shone in the object and split into a billion stars that glinted within, splitting again onto the couch. Richard took another sip of brandy and stared at the lozenge-shaped crystal, vaguely milky white in color but for the most part transparent. It measured nine inches from its two longest points and perhaps five inches at its widest. The prism was hexagonal, with perfectly cut sides, lacking any imperfection. Though there was one inclusion that sent an electrified feeling racing through Richard's spine; an eye. A growth within the prism that had somehow formed into the shape of that of a perfect, unblemished, perpetually staring eye.

The cold was biting into his hand. He set the prism back down on the coffee table and his glass beside it.

Before Karl could say anything, Richard cut him off. "How'd you get out of there?"

The old German was silent for a while, simply stared at the memories he saw in the fireplace before going on. "First, I waited for the storm to be over. Then, half mad from the howling wind, hunger, and thirst, I got off the tractor and started walking. Stupid, I know, but it was a chance, a greater chance than merely standing still and waiting to be buried in a snowdrift. I had that prism tucked in my jacket. Not quite sure why, though, I suppose I thought it would be worth a bit more than the meager paychecks they were giving us. I walked for what felt like hours upon hours, though I'm sure it couldn't have been all that long. After a time, I started hallucinating."

"Oh?"

"Hmm. What I saw, Richard, was a structure."

Karl paused, showman's break to increase the suspense. Knowing that he wouldn't continue until the break was acknowledged, Richard asked him what he meant.

"It was a cubical building, designed much like our own base, though much, much larger and quite a bit older. I went to it, looking for a way in, but there was none. There were doors and windows but they had all been barred from the inside. I circled around, swearing about as much as my grandfather had after a few beers. Imagine my surprise when I see the west side of the structure was missing, seemingly _blown_ outward by some internal explosion, and what it exposed was a pyramid."

Richard looked at his friend, hoping the confused look he had on his face would merit some explanation.

"Yes, my friend, a pyramid. An octagonal pyramid, showing through the outer structure like a compound fracture, the most disgusting shade of yellow one could imagine. There was an array of outer crystals encircling the structure, like the tops of glaciers. Quite so; surely this thing was set into the ice, ingrained so deeply, that all I was seeing was the bare surface of something grand. In my madness, I studied the prisms, then knowing little at all to do with mineralogy anyway. I stepped over the crumbled shell of the metal-and-wooden walls and examined everything, making mental notes that would not stay with me. Then I found the door."

"The door?"

Karl nodded solemnly, no smile or grin to give away a lie. "Yes, the door. A circular affair leading down and into the pyramid. And, carved above the door, with a skill surpassing any of that I've ever seen, was a statue. Richard…"

Karl suddenly looked at the younger man, a light of age and attentive memory flooding through his blue-grey eyes. There was a zeal in them barely peeking through an expression of fear. It infected Richard and made his skin grow cold and his heart pound loudly in his chest.

"Richard, the statue was that of a woman, a giant woman. Tall and imposing, with an expression devoid of any interest or emotion. I found that strange, very strange. In almost all ancient cultures, one finds works of art depicting women with a maternal expression, even those warrior goddesses, Freya and Artemis for examples, have a motherly nature to them; protectors and defenders. None today can disagree that even the Venus of Willendorf statuettes project a power from within, the power of Motherhood, which is to say the power of Life itself. But there was none of that about this statue, Richard. Absolutely none of it. She merely stared ahead at whatever lay there on the horizon, uncaring for it or anything else. And the detail! Such craftsmanship and attention to every minute facet! Odd, eh?"

"It was _your_ hallucination," Richard reminded him. At this Karl looked as if he had been slapped, which softened into something different. Facial alchemy taking place, and Karl gave him that clever grin that he was always known for, that expression that said _I know something you don't know_.

"Anyway," Karl continued, "I stayed there awhile out of the wind, but the statue concerned me. I am not ashamed today to admit that it even horrified me, and never mind the open door leading to darkness. I left the yellow pyramid and the outer shell that contained it and went back out into the storm. Foolish, I know, but at least the storm was _familiar_. I don't know when I passed out, but when I next awoke I was in the camp's infirmary, getting a talking to by the army captain. Nobody found the prism I kept, kept safe in the confines of my coat. Wasn't even aware that it was still in my possession.

"As you can imagine, when Nixon's administration fell through and the Watergate scandal had reached its peak, the next man wanted to undo everything with the previous regime, particularly unnecessary expenditures, so there was no more reason for us to be there. We packed up and went back home. We were given a final paycheck and papers to sign saying we didn't know anything about anything, and we surely were not about to tell anybody about that nothing. After that, I took up courses in mineralogy in addition to anthropology and history. That would continue into the decades, but no matter where I went, no matter to what corners of the earth they would send me and what wonders I would unearth, my mind was still lost in an Antarctic storm, somewhere with the pyramid and its yellow guardian. Until your email."

Karl leaned forward and refilled his glass with more brandy. Then, he pushed the black binder toward Richard, who felt an instant and inexplicable revulsion to the article. He regarded it as a parakeet would an overly inquisitive tom cat. Feeling as though he was already standing at a cliff and may as well peer down, he reached for it and opened it up.

He wasn't sure at first what he was looking at until he slid one out of its plastic holder and looked at it more closely. A series of aerial surveillance photographs, perhaps two dozen altogether, were packed into the binder. A series of numbers were placed in the lower right corner of each photo, displaying what he imagined was a date, time, and elevation of the plane. The objects featured were for the part blurry, but each seemed to depict a structure or construct in the snow, little more than a shoebox in some, though others were taken much closer. Richard could make out a crumbling box of corrugated steel and thick wooden beams, preserved by the dry cold air and almost entirely encased by years of wind and snow. It surrounded what looked like a circus tent, octagonal and bright, which rose up to a point at the center.

With a particularly large icicle forming in his stomach, he stared at a point on one of the photographs, trying hard to convince himself that what he was seeing was not a large face on one side of the object.

Karl cleared his throat, sounding like an old _Brigadegeneral_ about to reprimand his troops. "Were madness merely an impairment of cognitive function and hallucinations merely disordered fantasies, I would say that these photos do not exist. That they were forgeries, someone else's idea of a joke at my expense, but they are not. I had an old friend of mine stationed in McMurdo take these photographs. I had to pay far too much to keep his mouth shut about it…he wanted to speak out to the authorities, wanted to make a political thing out of it. Technically, Norway owns the land there, though they don't seem to remember it's theirs.

"Richard, I've asked you to come up here for several reasons. The first, to tell you my tale. The second was to show you those photographs, and the prism. And the third, is to ask you if you would want to join me on my new expedition to the bottom of the world."

Richard pulled his eyes away from the staring face in the photograph to look up at Karl, who regarded him as an owl would an intriguing sound. "What?" was all he could say.

"I'm taking a crew down to Antarctica, to take a genuine look at this object of ours. I have a dozen good members already picked out, hardliners from the scientific community who know what they're doing and who won't be burdened by meaningless red tape. We will be well equipped to deal with whatever trouble should come up, and all will be paid, handsomely, I might add, at the end. I want you to join us, Richard."

"Why? What do you hope to uncover at this place?"

His friend let out a sigh and leaned forward on his knees, owl eyes fixing hard on him. "The same thing you want to understand, Richard. The thing that terrifies you and keeps you penned in your little office. You want as much as I do to understand why all these crystals are scattered across the earth, why some have been formed into objects and structures, why they feature so prominently in ancient human artwork. The Mashriq Glass, for God's sake, Richard! Do you think _that_ was coincidental? No, you know that there is something deeper to all of this. You just have to jump in. And for all your worrying, Richard, you _know_ that you want to understand."

Richard shook his head and wiped the cold sweat that had been collecting on his brow, running it up through his short mud-brown hair. He didn't want to ruin what he had, what he had been trying to build back up to before the troubles began. Still, that lingering urge to _know_ , to get to the answers to the questions that he had been accruing for months, was like a niggling sliver embedded deep in his skin. He thought of Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien's _The Hobbit_ , of the mad adventure he secretly lusted for but didn't want, not at the beginning, because it meant the ruination of security, sanity, and social standing. But Mr. Baggins did go, he went and he suffered for it, but he came out alright in the end, didn't he?

Dragons and magic rings notwithstanding, that is. Richard bit the inside of his cheek and swore loudly in his head. "When do we head out?" he said in a sigh.

Karl's smile lifted his cheeks so high that his eyes were mere beads of slate grey and dancing firelight. He nodded and immediately proceeded to refill his glass with more brandy. When he offered the same of Richard's glass, Richard did not try to dissuade him.

[]

 **Notes for Chapter 1/ Muller's Prism:**

 **The introductory chapter to my attempt at putting my absolute favorite horror entity, the creature I revere in fiction and film, in a Steven Universe setting. It should be noted that this is NOT a crossover, and I will argue for the reasoning when the entity [or my version of it] appears in a later chapter.**

 **I have a great love for techno-thrillers, having gone through high school reading H.G. Wells and Tom Clancy, and I sometimes find myself spouting long-winded matter-of-fact prose in the same manner. I sought to fuse that techno-thriller facet with my infatuation with Caitlin R. Kiernan's flowing, moody artistic language. Whether that works or not I'll leave up to The Reader.**


	2. Chapter 2

II  
Every Snowflake is a Second

The noise in the San Francisco bar was a war between the constant conversational drone of the patrons and the crushing beat of classic rock music ripping through the ceiling-mounted speakers, creating a wall of sound that exacerbated Richard's headache. He had been suffering the pangs of jetlag since he'd arrived in the city not ten hours ago, had only just set up his hotel room. Not for long, though, as Karl had told him where the crew would be gathering for drinks, a communications exercise. Quite necessary, Karl had said, as they would be spending the next two months or so in a research base once they reached Antarctica.

Richard checked his watch, wondering where Karl was, when the old man suddenly appeared before him, like a genie in a checkered blue and white shirt and blue jeans. He limped to the table and set down his mug, clearly in pain but hiding it well with his bright smile.

"Excellent to see you again, Richard. Quite the place, eh?"

"Is the gout that bad, Karl?"

His smile unwavering, Karl waved the question off. "Bosh. Pain is relative, and when you're an old man like me, pain becomes like an old compatriot that you despise. These pills do a good job of keeping him away, though."

Karl dropped a pair of pills from the little orange medicine bottle onto his palm and promptly tossed them into his mouth, chasing it with his drink. Richard nursed his own gin and tonic and observed the crowd. "I wished you'd picked a more quiet place than this, Karl. There're far too much people, too many things that can go wrong."

"That is the symptom of a man who's spent too much of his time in his little office."

"It's not a damn cubicle."

"It's ruining you, and that's why you're happy to be here."

Richard scowled and quietly sipped at his drink. After a time, he settled back against his chair and looked around at the young sunburnt faces, feeling like he was five times as old as the youngest person here.

"How is Dina?" Karl asked, startling Richard out of his growing reverie. "I've heard the troubles have been continuing?"

Richard sniffed. "Troubles" was Karl's pet word for his daughter's addiction, and it was poor word in that it was ineffectual in summing up the pain, shame, and horror it causes. It was nice that Karl should think of her; the last time he had seen her, she couldn't have stood higher than the table. "Actually, just before I left, I had a long talk with her. I'm sending her to a drying-out facility in Milwaukee. It's no Mayo Clinic, but it isn't exactly Hotel California. She's keen to go, to be honest, and she knows it's what she needs. I wish I could go and be by her side, but I've got to pay the bills. Baby steps, but they're in the right direction, I think."

Karl merely nodded a solemn old man's nod and took a gulp of his dark drink. Together they lapsed into a bubble of silence, quietly watching the pulsing swell of the crowd. It was a cool Friday evening, and to Richard, who was accustomed to the warm stillness of Minnesota woodlands, it seemed that every college and business had emptied and were flocking to this one place. He drummed his fingers on the table and anxiously glanced at his watch. "You did say seven, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. Your watch is too fast."

When Richard was about to return fire, a man and a woman broke out of the masses, appearing at their table as suddenly as Karl had done. The woman had chestnut hair that had just started to run grey at the roots. Her eyes were the dark green of Mediterranean olives, which complimented her soft brown dress and jacket. The man had a Billy goat beard, close-cut black hair, and deeply suntanned skin. He looked like a surfer and dressed like one. When the woman spoke, Richard caught the nearly vanished Irish accent.

"Hello. Mr. Muller?"

Karl smiled at the pair. "Why, yes. You must be Dr. Julia Pendle."

"Yes, yes. And this is Jeff Parson." the woman extended her hand and Karl shook it. Richard stood up and shook her hand as well, along with her companion's. The three of them sat down in unison, and almost immediately began talking. As is the case with learned minds, conversation quickly shifted toward fields of knowledge, with each member in turn doling out a summary of their careers, a brief explanation of how they got to be where they are, and a feeble attempt at modesty as they secretly fought to sound more interesting than the others. Julia, it turned out, was a doctor, surgeon, radiologist and a teacher, and Jeff was a chemical engineer. Richard wondered how Karl could lift his head and say he was an archeologist, which was all too often viewed as the dust collectors of the scientific community.

In time, the other members of their party had joined them, chairs appropriated from other tables, and there was much shuffling and scraping to make room. Richard was amused at the good time he was having, amazed that he was sharing laughter with everyone. There was Piotr Kristensen, Francesco Vitti, Hannover Kim, Lucille Vance, and a half dozen others. By a stroke of luck, or perhaps because Karl already knew it, many people in the group had some adequate skill or knowledge with the specialties of the others, particularly computer programming. Hours faded away, catalyzed by genuine joviality and booze, and the light outside gradually faded to a Pacific haze of purple-orange-pink.

"Is this everyone?" Piotr had asked, a rosy glow showing through his exuberant brown facial hair. Karl shook his head and wiped his lips.

"Oh, no, no. There will be others coming with us who have much to do before we get there. Preparations to make and inquiries to be seen to. Olav Kittelsen is our liaison with the Norwegian government, he'll see to making sure our camp will be well stocked and self-sufficient when we get there. There are various mechanics and maintenance technicians that will be joining us as well to make sure that the generator doesn't cock up, and animal handlers. I expect some of you to bring your own cameras or video recording equipment, so there will be no need to hire, and _pay_ , a professional film crew. Oh! And there will also be a mountaineering and outdoor survival specialist accompanying us. She was requested at the highest regard by the Oslo city council and SINTEF, so I didn't have much say in the matter. Her name is Garnet, and that's all I know of her, really."

"Who do we have backing the trip?" Julia asked.

"I personally will be financing our expedition. All legal liabilities will rest with me."

"Oh, geez," Jeff said suddenly. "Get a load of that."

Richard and the others followed his odd expression to the entrance and saw a young woman weaving her way through the crowd. It was easy to pick her out of the murmuring throngs; she looked like a piece of refuse from one of the clubs that close when the sun rises, places that play White Zombie and Einstürzende Neubauten over dimly lit rooms that are fogged up and shot through with neon. A connoisseur of abandoned warehouses that had been converted into goth punk rock clubs and New Wave Drive-Ins featuring weekly viewings of Blade Runner or Taxi Driver. Indeed, she looked like she could be a stand-in for some underground film.

She had short hair down to her jawline, one half black and the other dyed a deep blue, matching the dark blue of her eyes, which had been thickly lined with Kohl. Her leather jacket vest glinted in the overhead lights, displaying the forest of tattoos on her arms, oceanic psychedelia that seemed to twist and writhe as her arms moved. Tight black jeans that were torn at the knees seemed to consume the light. Army surplus combat boots covered her feet and shins, laced up tight and sounding like sharp bar-brawl punches on the barroom floor. A Lemniscate tentacle hung on a silver chain between her undersized breasts. Couldn't have been older than twenty or so.

A man, either intentionally or accidentally, it was difficult to say for certain, bumped roughly into her as he passed. It was a hard impact, but she scowled and brushed it off, her eyes darting across room. To Richard's surprise, Julia Pendle raised her hand and waved the girl over. As she neared, Julia stood up and the two shook hands. Richard noticed that the girl wore black riding gloves over her large hands.

"Everyone, this is Savanna Dijon, one of my students at the university. One of the best, in fact."

The girl took the compliment with a soft shake of her head but she smiled, blue lipstick pulling into a thin scar. Almost at once, the scent of Sandalwood incense hit the table like an atom bomb.

"Lovely to meet you, Miss Dijon," Karl said, and everyone for the most part mimicked the greeting. Even Jeff, who regarded the girl with a dark expression before staring down at his beer, mumbled a word or two of salutation. Richard, trying and failing to understand the reasoning behind Jack's disdain, mentally categorized the man as an asshole and turned his attention to Julia, who began speaking in earnest of a recent news article regarding Neolithic pottery. Savanna sat down in a chair beside her instructor, sitting quiet and looking more than a little tired.

Night fell over the bar in a velvet maroon curtain. Richard watched in fascination from his chair as a distant rainstorm billowed in from the sea, scraping the sky above the lighthouse and heading inland. A bottle of wine was being passed around the table, and many tongues were turning the same color as plum skin.

"So, Savanna," chimed Lucille, herself more than a tad plastered, "what do you do? What will you be bringing to the table?"

"Oh…I'm studying biology at the University. I'm hoping to do my thesis on organisms living in subzero temperatures."

"Any minors?" Richard asked. He couldn't recall hearing a girl with such a husky voice before.

"Pathology and medicine."

Many heads nodded sagely in acknowledgement or memory of collegiate study. Richard saw Jeff shake his head, pretentious grin of the damned on his face. He refilled his glass with the wine. "That sounds like quite a lot at your age. You don't think that that's a bit too much to handle?"

Savanna tossed Jeff a dark look, which did nothing to remove the man's ungentle grin. "I mean, with all those classes, it kind of sounds like you're unsure of yourself. It kind of says to me that you have no idea what you want to be. I don't really know if the expedition can take you on when you've got so much _in_ your hand."

The blush exploded on Savanna's cheeks; she looked like was fighting with herself on whether or not she should leap across the table and stick her fork in Jeff's eye or run away. Richard watched this, feeling a spark of rage flare in his gut, accelerated by the wine.

"I don't know," he said. "I bet she can take of herself." Jeff glared at him, looking like a carnivore that had been cheated of its prey, and Richard was all too happy to allow a smug look. He spared a glance at Savanna, who kept her eyes down to her plate. Sweat was beading on her brow and her makeup was starting to run.

The bar eventually reached closing time, as was its fashion, and the staff were starting to give them anxious looks. They paid the bill in full and left, heading out the door in a slim trickle of humanity with eager salutations and promises that it was going to be an exciting adventure.

Richard and Karl held back by the doorway, smelling the distant rainstorm. The old man's limp seemed exaggerated, though it could easily have been the wine. Richard steadied him with one arm, keeping his other propped against the wall of the bar.

"Fine night," Karl said. "Fine, fine night."

"You sure you can make it to your hotel room, old boy?"

"Oh, _ja_ , _ja_. We old folks keep our secrets, _mein fruend_."

"Yeah, I can tell."

"What, are you calling me old?"

The two shared a laugh as they walked down the street. Richard saw his friend off to his hotel, pointed him down the street and let him go, more like, and the night was filled with an old German love ballad. Richard loitered for a while, shuffling his feet on the sidewalk and breathing the night air into his lungs. Realizing that he had accidentally placed a used napkin in his pocket, he went over to the trash bin and tossed it away.

Something crunched loudly beneath his shoe, in the space between sidewalk tiles. Looking down, he saw the broken and splintered fragments of a little pink crystal. The prism looked like it had grown up from between the tiles, pushing aside the concrete. Three inches long, from the look of it, before he stepped on it, now shattered pieces. But the base remained firmly entrenched. Richard let out a sigh and shook his head, didn't know what else to do.

The future horrified him. It terrified him. There were too many probabilities, too many variables and risks to be taken, too many things to go wrong. He admired those who saw the future under a filter of bright sunlight, of flowery scents and positive sounds, when all he saw was a nest of serpents, a sea of venom and the maddening eternal rasp of their tails. How could Karl or any of them be so certain that everything would be alright? How could they possibly see the light at the end of the tunnel, presuming that the light exists?

Gemstones across the world. Swords and axes. A pyramid at the bottom of the earth with a woman's statue guarding its entrance.

With a sickened and lost feeling settling at the bottom of his stomach, he began walking toward his hotel.

[ ]

Richard checked the straps of his pack for the fifth time of the morning, a big and many-pocketed affair he had purchased before leaving San Francisco. Its design reminded him of an alligator snapping turtle, which had been Dina's favorite animal after she had hooked one on a camping trip. The memory stung, but it still tasted sweet. He ran his fingers through his hair, fingers coming away slick with accrued oils. He hadn't had a shower in a while, none of them had, since playing airplane leap frog in South America, finally making it to Santiago, where a fully fueled Cessna awaited to take them all to McMurdo on the Ross Ice Shelf.

The plane was finely heated, though the warmth was causing their collected personal scents to meld together into a fume of sweat and body odor. Some had the windows rolled down, though once they took off they would have to settle with the smell for a bit. Karl wound his way through the aisle, smiling and nodding and in all good spirits. His dream to return to a place that had remained half buried in the snow was soon to be realized, and there was little that made him pause or harm his smile. He conversed happily with the crew, looking like he hardly needed his cane.

Richard removed a small suitcase from his pack before stowing it in the overhead compartment. He took out an unmarked manilla folder, small nervous coffee mark blemishing the top corner. He opened it and stared at the photos, snapshots of the objects that he had retrieved from the mine in Budapest, half in solid black and white and half in color. The color ones were out of focus, likely because he had been shaking, but some base details could still be made out. He looked at the axes first, big axes of topaz, a pair lying on the floor of the huge room where coal and uranium had once been mined, and one set at an angle, its huge blade stuck into the stony floor. The shaft measured no more than ten feet in length and was as wide as his thigh, the blades four feet from shaft to tip, the curving blade arcing down for about five feet. A huge piece of hardware, a giant's weapon. The next group of photos reminded him of what lay beside the axes, what looked like a pool of shimmering pink liquid, but was actually a single large crystal, its surface as smooth as glass.

And then the statuettes, a ring of perhaps nine of them surrounding the gemstone like an ancient burial site, depicting a large kneeling woman, and everything made out of that semi-translucent pink crystal. Richard felt the heat of that mine boiling through distance and time to reach him again, heat of the earth to remind him that none of that had been a bad dream.

"Anyone sitting here?"

Richard looked up and saw Savanna staring at him, her eyes hidden by a pair of sunglasses with large mirrored lenses. He quickly put the photos back in the folder and stuck it on the floor between his feet. "Of course not," he said, lending a smile and motioning to the seat beside him. She stored her pack and sat down, a small hardcover held in her gloved hands. She scratched at an itch beneath her Judas Priest tour shirt and immediately lost herself in the yellowed pages of her book.

"I'm Richard, by the way."

Savanna glanced very briefly at him before returning to her book. "You know my name," she said, and sniffled. He nodded, feeling that awkward was a poor and inefficient word for how he felt just then, giving into the silence and grabbing for one of the brochures stored in the back of the seat ahead of him.

"What're we waiting for?" He heard a man grumbling some rows behind him. He turned his head and saw Piotr looking out the window with an expressionless face. He looked like he had spent all of the previous night checking and rechecking his equipment, as Richard had done.

Karl stood up from his seat and offered the speaker a pleasant smile. "We're waiting for Miss Garnet to arrive, of course, which should not take much longer. They told me she…Ah!"

A woman appeared from the front of the plane, looking like she had just stepped off the set of a _Foxy Brown_ movie. Her black hair, done up in a thick and blocky afro, brushed against the walls of the entryway, touching the ceiling when she cleared it. She was quite tall, with full lips, strong limbs and a nonplussed expression. She adjusted her spectacles, oddly thick and reflective ones, clearly from no rack of any retail store. She wore an odd bodysuit that looked almost tactical, a small Norwegian flag stitched on the left shoulder and a white star on the other.

"Miss Garnet?" Karl offered her his hand.

"Mr. Muller. Nice to be here."

She sat down at the front of the plane, unaware that behind her, whispered conversation erupted regarding her stature, her hair, her strong English accent. Karl turned to his crew and beamed at them. "Well, now that we're all here, let us off to adventure!"

Cheering and applause drowned out the sound Karl made as he tapped his cane on the floor three times, apparently to signal the pilot to take off. Richard sat back in his chair, thinking of tomorrow and what it might bring. Hopefully good, maybe good. Karl sat down across the aisle from Garnet, and the two spoke together. He couldn't hear what they were saying, and it was difficult to presume just what they were conversing about as neither of their expressions changed.

Time passed while they were in the air. The older crewmembers who were used to traveling quickly decided to get what sleep they could, while the younger ones remained awake with nervous energy, either talking excitedly to each other or still trying to make sure that all their equipment had been checked off and in good condition, making sure their cameras had film, making sure there was nothing that would spoil it for them. Richard wondered just how many of them had ever actually been to Antarctica before.

Having exhausted his supply of brochures and travel guides, Richard turned his attention to the window. When his wonder of the sky quickly dwindled, he glanced at the book Savanna was reading. She looked like she was already halfway through with it, and it was no brochure.

"What're you reading?" he asked her. She spared him an annoyed glance and inhaled a broken sigh, letting it out through her nose. When she spoke, she kept her lips tightly sealed.

"Poetry by Linnea Karhunen."

Richard let the smile bloom on his face. He had never been put into this situation, never expected he ever would, and the absurdity made him want to laugh. "Really?" he said, and scoffed.

"What?" Savanna grumbled, deep voiced honed to a serrated edge.

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I've honestly never met anyone who read any of my grandmother's books before. She always said she'd have higher chances being struck by lightning."

Savanna looked at him for a long moment, and he could tell by the way her eyebrows jumped that she was blinking. "Linnea Karhunen was your grandmother?"

He smiled again at the utter absurd streak of chance and nodded. Savanna's jaw practically disconnected from its housing as she used a thin wedge of steel to mark her place and set the book on her lap. She grinned, genuinely smiled, as she shifted in her seat to face him properly. They talked for what felt like hours about his grandmother, and Richard knew he had enough information about her to fill several books on their own. She eagerly listened to him as he told her how his grandmother came to America from the ice strewn valleys of Finland in the early 1920's, which really was bad timing. He gladly kept the darker bits of Granny Bear's life from Savanna, like her preoccupation with cemeteries and places of death ever since her first child was eaten by wolves, and especially her habit of staring off into the woods every winter.

"You really like her poetry?"

"Hell yeah, I do. I mean, her work really helped me get through some rough times in my life. She just had something about the way she wrote…"

"I suppose it really puts a bad day in perspective."

"Yeah."

Richard shared her smile and told her that his grandmother would have been thrilled to know that there was someone in the world that enjoyed her work. Savanna smiled and looked down at her book, running her fingers over the woven cover.

"What's your favorite of her works? If you don't mind my asking, I mean."

Savanna stared at a point on the seat in front of her, looking for the answer. Her tongue pushed against the wall of her cheek as she thought for a while. "I guess _Yesterday's Winters_ , if I really had to choose. It just seems like the summary of all her work."

Richard nodded, not trying to remember the lines of that particular poem. He remembered his grandmother when she was working on it, one of the final things she wrote before her life flitted away as she slept, one long midwinter night.

Before he could say anything, Savanna's voice rolled through the warm air between them.

The day lies cold and grey, October whispering through the leaves  
And speaks of tomorrow's promises, what yesterday's conceived  
We try to remember underneath the angels' rain  
Dreams bespoken and love intoned, 'neath sere diamond chains  
Devotion; The sumptuous light so beckoned  
But the night lies forever inside us  
And memory of this lies out of our reach  
For every snowflake is a second  
And we will never learn what they teach

Richard smiled at her, even though the words made him nervous. She shrugged and stared down at her book, suddenly abashed. "The third stanza is my favorite."

"That's pretty good."

She looked at him, her mouth opening to speak when her sunglasses slid off the bridge of her nose, falling down between her leg and the seat, slipping to the floor. She quickly reached down and scrabbled for her shades, swiftly putting them back on her face, but not before Richard saw the puffy purple-orange bruise surrounding her left eye. She opened her book and promptly began reading.

"Hey, Savanna—"

"Is it my eye?"

Richard swallowed. "I, what?"

"Is it _my_ eye?"

"Yeah?"

"Then it's _my_ business."

She became glued to her book and wouldn't be swayed by anything outside of it. Richard looked at her for a moment longer, a moment spent vainly hoping that whatever conviviality there had been could be rekindled. The father in him wanted to say something, to at least make an attempt to comfort her, knowing that the effort would be wasted. Resigned and feeling awful, he grabbed the manilla folder from beneath his seat and began reading, hoping the next couple of hours would grant him an answer to something.

[ ]

 **Notes for Chapter 2/ Every Snowflake is a Second:**

 **The chapter wherein we see a majority of the important characters and show their relationships. One might argue that there's not a whole lot of action going on here, but I disagree. Also, we finally see Garnet, ensuring that this is a story set in the Steven Universe…universe. I also apologize if my grasp of German is less than acceptable.**

 **I always find myself writing about characters that make me want to break away from the current story and give them their own worlds, their own times and stories. In this case, I refer to Savanna Dijon and Linnea Karhunen.**

 **The poem is also mine. My intention was that Linnea Karhunen was the Midwest's answer to Edgar Allen Poe. I know the lines don't make sense, but there you go. I used to be able to do competent poetry.**


	3. Chapter 3

III  
Encampment (This Way to Cherry Bay)

They spent twenty-four hours at McMurdo, all too happy to get a shower and rest in a soft bed that wasn't tilted upright. Richard spent much of the day in his own bunk perusing the Budapest photographs and the notes he had made, forcing his mind to reach an ultimate deduction that wasn't soon coming. Whether there was simply too much on his mind or he was sick to death of seeing the same damned pictures over and over again he didn't know, but he did know that there would be no answer here. In a nearby room, the original members of the base and a few from the expedition were watching an annual showing of The Shining, and Jack Nicholson's voice was always answered with cheers from the group.

Yawning though not feeling at all tired, he got up to go to the kitchen, hoping there was a decent supply of coffee. He met no one in the halls, and the kitchen was empty. He grabbed a thermos and filled it, drinking viciously, punishing himself for not finding an answer yet. The crystals invaded his dreams, his daydreams, pushing up through the walls of his imagination and blocking out everything else.

The coffee was cold. He grimaced but kept drinking it. One of the McMurdo crew came in to grab a loaf of napkins from the table. She smiled at him and he nodded at her, acknowledging each other's exhaustion. One of the fluorescent tubes above stuttered anxiously before going dead.

"That happens sometimes," the woman said, following his gaze. "When it gets down to sixty below all night every night, the wiring's bound to piss up. It gets really ridiculous during bad storms."

She left him alone to digest this, which did not go down too well with the coffee. During the night, Olav Kittelsen arrived to speak with Karl, and the two began a long conversation in Norwegian. Some hours later, Karl stepped heavily to Richard's bunk, sitting down on the empty mattress alongside it.

"All's well?" Richard asked, rubbing at his raw eyes.

"Well as can be. The rest of the team will meet us at base camp; from what I gathered they seem to have everything in preparation. The labs will be filled with the necessary equipment, plumbing and electricity seen to. We will be two hundred-odd miles from the South Pole, at the foot of . I must tell you, Richard, I feel a bit strange being here again, where I was two steps from falling dead of the cold. It feels rather like visiting a battlefield."

"I saw you and Kittelsen talking. You looked like you got a little angry for a bit."

"Ach. I'm having trouble procuring a pair of tractors, that's all. I wanted German make, which apparently the Norwegian government views as a snub in their direction. So we'll have to wait for another few days yet to receive a pair of their _own_ vehicles."

Richard nodded and scratched an itch from beneath his shirt. Karl stared at the space between his feet and would not look away.

"Karl."

The old man looked up at him, and Richard could see the bags already hanging beneath those blue-grey eyes. Or had they already been there, hidden behind the smiles?

"What do you really hope to find there? You're eating through your fortune, you're tearing yourself apart, for what? A pilgrimage to the place where you almost snuffed it? Reassurance that you're not crazy? This all seems like way too much for way too little."

The smile that spread over the old German's face infuriated Richard, as though he were laughing at Richard's uncertainty. "Richard, do you remember what they said about the Mashriq Glass? How it turned the entire archeological and spiritual worlds on their heads, how it practically taunted us with its secrets. And then by purest accident we realized one of its secrets. Just a little thing, but what a ripple it made, eh? A single crystal to have appeared in the ancient texts of _five_ major religions, in _six_ major metropolitan centers. A seed that spread from continent to continent, sowing itself in the imagination of Man, clinging to our history and, dare I say it, drawing us together."

"That's all speculation."

"Yes, unfortunately it is _still_ speculation because no one wishes to believe it. _We_ are the captains of our ship, and _we_ are the masters of our fate. Or for the more religious types, it was Providence that drew men together, a Divine will, surely not a physical, tangible object. But one wonders. When one gets so old, one does wonder. Why am I doing this, Richard? I'm doing this because I _want to know_. I simply _must know_ all that can be known, every secret that can be unraveled _must_ be unraveled. It is _strange_ , Richard, for there to be so many gemstones in the world, strange that they should have grown in the manners they have done. I often wonder if the source is even terrestrial in nature."

Richard found himself looking very hard at Karl, looking for the joke, looking for the rosiness of wine, but there was none, and that seemed to make things worse. "What're you getting at? You mean, like, aliens?"

"I mean perhaps there was a third party we haven't yet considered. Suppose Man's proliferation in the Fertile Crescent, the sudden surge in intelligence and creativity yet unseen by our cousin _Homo Neanderthalus_ , what if all of that and more was _guided_ , if not begun, by some outside intelligence, and these crystals are the remnants, the evidence?"

"Ridiculous," Richard spat as he turned to look out the window. There was night lying outside the glass, frigid void in sharply contrasting white and black.

"Yes, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm getting dotty in my age, becoming a bit addled and straining for a youth I no longer possess. Maybe I'm just grasping at straws out of desperation. But still, don't you find it odd?"

"Yes, damn it! It's all very weird, and you're making things weirder!"

Karl laughed, a condescending sound a father makes when his child has done something foolhardy. "Yes, I suppose so. Good night, Richard."

Richard harrumphed, not wanting to argue that it was already well after midnight. He rolled onto his side so he could look at the serene emptiness outside. He knew there was no sleep coming, probably not for a while, and that he'd likely just ruined the last night when he could get some rest. He heard Karl's diamond willow cane tap on the ceramic tile floor, sounding like the clacking of bone on bone, and he shut his eyes if only to ease the flesh around them.

Then the cane stopped. Karl's voice was long and forlorn in the empty room.

"It is worth pondering though, Richard. Humanity is a barbarous, vicious group of animals; they pillage and devour all that they can and care for nothing but their own. We revel and rejoice in our enemy's anguish. Many enjoy the suffering of others, particularly if it furthers our own ends. Strange that the most ancient artifacts we've discovered, these crystals, are all for the most part in the shape of weapons. If our mothers indeed came from beyond the stars…"

Karl left that sentence to hang in the air like a black and amorphous thing before wishing Richard a good night again, pointless as it was. The statement was not lost on Richard, though, and he quickly finished the thought on his own; _what mothers would give birth to such monsters_?

Sleep came to him shortly after that, a dull and thankfully dreamless sleep.

[ ]

Dawn came late, but the crew was already awake to receive it. They packed up and walked through the frigid morning to the Cessna, the younger ones grumbling for more than one reason. Richard hefted his pack and thought of how their camp would look, imagining thin claustrophobic corridors and tiny rooms, a box waiting to be buried by an avalanche. He knew of course that that wasn't how the camp would look, but the thought remained nevertheless.

Savanna avoided him, as she avoided everyone else. She wore a pair of thick goggles when she was in public, makeup just thick enough to conceal the bruise around her eye. She kept her poetry book stuck in her pocket and took it out whenever she had a chance. It was an obvious defense mechanism, Richard thought, wishing he had something like that. The photos were a poor option.

They reached the camp around noon, and were not disappointed when they saw it. It was a series of squat buildings of thick wood and corrugated steel, built with acutely angled walls to allow the snow to blow over them. Some of the structures were connected by lengths of steel railings above the ground, and fluorescent orange guide flags dotted the ground between them. There were seven structures in total, arranged in the shape of a big H. A satellite dish rested at the top of the building in the center, which was taller than the others and looked more or less like a fat old toad standing amidst smaller toads. People in thick dark suits were walking between the buildings, and some were standing idly by a makeshift runway. The mountains loomed high above them like the broken spine of something gargantuan.

Karl explained to them the outline of the encampment, distributing maps for everyone while he spoke. He pointed to the barracks, which were segregated by sex, the two labs, the mechanic and technician's shed, the infirmary, the empty garage, the kennels, and the communications relay tower, which lay atop the recreations building, which had been termed "The House" by the builders, since it had been built to possess all the amenities of a family home. The crew immediately forgot their grumbling nature and became more animated, catalyzed by the sight of the camp; not only would they be living at the bottom of the planet, but they would be doing it with all the modern comforts.

They had been given an hour to accommodate themselves with their rooms in the barracks, find the showers and bathrooms, and to peruse the hallways of the recreational area before Karl called them all in from the PA system. Richard pulled a humorless grin as he pulled on a different shirt and donned his thick jacket. In an effort to use up time waiting for the tractors to arrive, Karl wanted to brief them on the nature of the journey, a feature which confused many in the group.

The spacious room was outfitted with an old-fashioned projector and a white sheet, which was hung on the wall. The pool table and other qualities of the room were pushed aside against the walls to make way for the group of metal foldout chairs. Richard was seated at the front row, busily going through his papers. He was early, and he waited for the thirty or so crew members to filter into the area and find their own seats. Savanna sat down beside him, thick sunglasses like pools of inky darkness. She didn't say anything to him, and he obliged the silence as they both waited. Garnet stood by herself, propping herself up against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, becoming a statue.

 _What a strange crew_ , he mused, almost chuckled. _But at least we're not the Donner Party._

Karl stood at a table beside the projector. When he was certain everyone had arrived, he stood up and motioned for everyone to quiet down. The room darkened, the projector shone on the white silk sheet, and the silence deepened. Karl cleared his throat, about to pull the trigger on the suspense he felt he was building.

"Is this all of us? Good. Now, first I'd like to thank all of you for coming here to this cruel pale world with me, and to share in the realization of one of our planet's most ancient and mysterious secrets. You all want to know why we're here, and I won't beat the bush, as it were, any more than I have to."

He pressed a button, the projector whirred and clicked, and an image flared up on the sheet. Full color and a little grainy, it showed a carving of a large, faceless, full breasted woman holding a horn with thirteen marks. "The Great Goddess of Laussel," Karl remarked, then clicked the button. The figure was replaced with another, the Venus of Willendorf. He went through a series of photographs of similar disposition, paleolithic artwork and Goddess symbolism. "Tiamat," Karl went on, "Aradia…Isis…Freya…Ishtar…Cerridwen…Shub-Niggurath…Hecate…"

More and more in like manner. Richard heard somebody cough, and Savanna looked at her watch. Karl stopped the slide at a picture that Richard was familiar with, having seen it enough during his time with the Anishinabe people by the Great Lakes. It was the Ojibwe representation of Shub-Niggurath, charcoal outline drawn on animal hide, an impossibly tall woman with skin blacker than night, four eyes burning red, and trailing behind her were what might be construed as hair. Semi-formed figures were falling from her open womb and scattering away from their mother to all corners of the world.

At the core of the figure's body, infused in the solar plexus, a sharp outline of a lozenge-shaped crystal had been made.

The photos changed in their format; goddess symbolism was replaced with gemstones. Towering prisms greater than anything man had made; tiny crystals that had grown where they shouldn't have, pushing aside the conquered material; crystals formed into weapons, swords, axes, maces, medieval articles of destruction; ornate statues and figurines, coming full circle back to goddess representations.

"It is a curious thing to note," Karl said in a stage hand's whisper, "how deeply all of this has been ingrained into our society, into our civilization, and even into our subconscious. We see images of all of this everywhere we are, from the basest advertisements to the most revered natural formations."

The slide now showed a perfume ad with a supermodel staring hard into the camera. With her pale skin, blood red lips, and sexy half-lidded eyes, she reminded Richard of a vampire. The next showed a collection of the massive yellowed skeletons of cave bears, _Ursus spelaeus_ , older giant brothers to the modern grizzly bear; the skulls were arranged on a stone grotto and marked with red ochre, an ancient human bear shrine. Set alongside the skulls were the glittering, powdered fragments of shattered gemstones.

Richard jerked his head to the side when something caught his eye. Had Garnet moved? He wasn't sure, but she was pensively pursing her lips. Karl continued.

"It is not in Man's nature to _know_. It is in Man's nature to _learn_. We study and gather information, and we build upon that information, and we strive to learn further so that our chances of survival in the world increase. Through learning, we've acquired fire, the wheel, the ship, and yes…"

The next slide showed a still shot of the Operation Buster-Jangle nuclear test. Karl made no comment, instead skipping to the next slide. It was in black and white and very grainy, but Richard could still make out a forest of trees, their limbs sheared and all flattened low to the ground, as though some giant had absently decided to rest and sat down.

"Tunguska," Savanna said aloud.

"Very good. Yes, the Tunguska Incident took place in the year 1909 in the forests of Siberia. The trees, you'll notice, have all been laid low. Not cut mind you, but simply forced down in a radial fashion, rather reminiscent of the crop circle phenomena in the United States. But why?"

"Cloudburst," came a voice from the group, and others muttered other atmospheric phenomena. Karl silenced them by raising his hand.

"Yes, yes, possibly so. But who can say for certain?" The slide skipped ahead to an enlarged version of the previous photograph, detailing the epicenter of the fallen trees. Richard saw something small and white and angular, a glint of sunlight reflecting off of the object. There was much whispering issuing from the crowd behind Richard, and Karl had some difficulty getting them to quiet down.

"As I say, it is in Man's nature to _learn_ , and to learn is the reason we are here. To acknowledge secrets and lay them bare before us is not to demean the earth, but to respect and give credence to it. The secret I hope to uncover here is perhaps the most ancient, most crucial secret that remains unknown to our species, and yet the answers are right in front of our eyes."

The slide show depicted more crystals poking up through industrial sites before finishing at the photo Karl's friend had made some months ago, the aerial photo of the octagonal structure piercing through the snow like a sulfurous yellow splinter. The face of the statue stared into the corner of the photograph with a blank, indifferent glare.

"This is a structure composed entirely of crystal, one side carved with a masterful skill into the likeness of a giant woman, as you can see. There are eight sides, each perfectly proportional. It measures seventy feet in circumference and from the surface displayed in this photo, some forty feet in height. We might assume that the structure contains much more than what we see, with areas below the snow. We do not know who built this, how it was built, or for what reason. This structure lies less than one hundred kilometers from _where we now sit_."

An explosion of muttering from the rows behind Richard swelled into a dull drone. Karl did not make any attempt to silence them, instead talking over them, his authority crowding out the noise. "It is my proposal that we enter this structure and plumb its depths, and bring to the surface anything that may explain why there are so many of these blasted crystals scattered across the world! To seek out the riches of understanding and knowledge is the reason we are here. To know!"

A hand rose up and Karl marked it, asking the person to speak. Richard clearly heard Julia Pendle's voice cut through the rest. "Where is the entrance, Mr. Muller?"

"The entrance is located just beneath the statue. Rather apropos, I should think. We will compose two teams for the first assault tomorrow, and regroup later at the entrance for a secondary run. I have no wish to be saddled with the responsibility of choosing who goes and who does not, so anyone wishing to join either of these teams may put their names into this hat here. Until then, I suggest we disband for now so that we may get acquainted with our new surroundings. Learn the ropes, as it were. Until tomorrow, _damen und herren,_ _guten abend._ "

Free to speak, the crew mumbled loudly until the room began to resemble a beehive. There was much gesticulation and thrown words as theories darted about from mouth to mouth. People were already taking out paper and pens to write their names. "Holy crap," Savanna said, looking almost out of breath as she stared at the projected photograph. Slowly, she stood up and began walking away, heading directly for the doors. As chairs scraped and scuffed the floor and excited, nervous voices droned on, Richard looked at Garnet. She was rubbing at her temples as though she had a massive headache. Stopping, she looked at him, or at least he thought she did. It was difficult to tell with her thick spectacles.

Almost immediately, she asked a bystander for paper and pen, quickly writing down her name in thick, blocky scrawl and depositing the slip into the hat Karl had left on the table. She then very brusquely headed for the exit.

Richard shook his head, finding himself caught up in the classroom fun of it all as he jotted his own name and tossed it into the hat.

 _Here's to adventure_ , he thought, trying to ignore the chill that that thought gave him.

[ ]

 **Notes for Chapter 3/ Encampment:**

 **The chapter wherein we show a whole lot of theoretical material and metaphysical information. I'm an amateur occultist and I can't help but flower a story with real-world metaphysics, elements of some form of practiced magick, or ancient Goddess/God symbolism. I'm rather happy with the brief conversation between Karl and Richard concerning the "mothers of Mankind," that the evidence they should leave us are weapons. We also have a map of the research station, a "big H." Here's to adventure, which I'm sure is what the expedition from Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" would say. Also, we see that Garnet's gonna get involved.**


	4. Chapter 4

IV  
First Assault on the Yellow Temple

Night holds a stronger power on this side of the planet than it does elsewhere. The polar circles mark the latitude beyond which the sun remains either above the horizon accordingly during the summer, and entombed in the horizon during the winter. The periods of winter darkness and summer daylight shift as one travels closer to the poles. Because of this, the bright blue illusion that the sunlight bestows on the earth is lifted, the veil ripped away, and the dark and cold reality of the universe is laid out to be witnessed at one's peril.

What daylight existed as the first team set out was sparse, a mere four hours that kept the sun low on the horizon, painting the sky in tints of pink and orange and invaded by wine-colored clouds. The mountains also absorbed the color, becoming fiery apparitions that hardly seemed real to the group, more like pieces of a dream that didn't want to stay in their minds. The modified Stridsfordon 9030N was like a bulky blue caterpillar, trundling quickly through the flat valley on its stubby treads. Some joker felt he was too hot in his jacket and decided to open the window; the succubus wind was low and licked at where they allowed their skin to show.

Richard cleared his throat, wincing. He felt a cold had been beginning to gestate for the last couple of days, now manifesting in a steel-wool feeling in his esophagus and a freely running nose that he knew would begin to crust over after a couple weeks. He sucked on a pineapple Lifesaver and kept wiping at his nose with a tissue, looking around at the group. They were all staring out of the windows, absorbing every detail of the pale world around them.

Julia Pendle was snapping photographs with a small disposable Kodak, an open notebook in her lap. Piotr was doing the same. Hannover Kim was busy reading a book on ancient human civilizations, unaware of each bump in the valley the Stridsfordon drove over. Karl was speaking with a pair of technicians, their names Richard didn't know. Garnet sat at the front of the bus, looking stoic and staring ahead. Richard wondered what was running through her mind, what was running through all of their minds, if any of it paralleled his own anxiety.

Soon enough, they crested a low hill, and the angular façade of a crumbling building came into view. The group pushed forward to see it, as though it pulled them forward. Richard let out a sigh as he noisily cleared his throat. Years of driving wind and snow had stricken down the corrugated walls that sheltered the pyramid, leaving them to dangle limply in the breeze.

Five minutes later, the group began filtering out of the Stridsfordon. They skirted the perimeter of the pyramid until they found the statue, and the sight of her forced out Richard's breath. The detail was immaculate, highly realistic, and it took him a moment to realize that her eyes were made to be open. It was so difficult to tell by her blank expression. The group stared up at her, whispering in awe at the figure for a long time before Karl drew their attention to their task. They began setting up a trio of high tents. Richard stood for a moment off to one side and just looked up at the mass of pale yellow crystal, looking to him like crystallized urine. He exhaled a nervous breath as he stared as the one thought that had been pervading his mind, that all of this was some rich old man's demented folly and that there was no pyramid, was dashed on the ice.

Garnet was standing off to the side just like him, staring up at the structure just as he was. She had a scowl on her face, anger, fear, or disgust, or perhaps an alchemical fusion of the three. When she turned she caught him looking at her, and she quickly went off to help set up the tents.

Richard had been keeping an eye on her ever since Karl's slideshow presentation, and it amazed him that this was the first time she had shown an emotional response to something.

Blue-white guide lights were plunged into the snow around the camp and the pyramid, cables run to a goodly sized gasoline motor. Once the tents had been erected and a foldout table in place, preparations began on excavation. The snow had risen nine feet since Karl's last viewing of the pyramid, according to his calculations, leaving the opening buried. The two technicians that Karl had been speaking to earlier suddenly appeared, carrying a large wooden crate between them, big yellow warnings labels on the front and back and the word EXPLOSIVE painted on the top.

"What the hell?" Julia said, eyebrows narrowing in concern.

Karl merely smiled at her, waving away her concern. "Thermite charges are a necessary ingredient of mining procedure, Miss Pendle. Please, stand aside, there."

"We might damage the structure," Hannover muttered, biting his lip.

"The blast zone has been carefully calculated to ensure that won't happen, Mr. Kim. Now I suggest we all cover our ears."

"But—"

Kim's sentence died on the wind as the two technicians came back, carrying a length of copper wire and a detonator between them. They looked to Karl for approval, and when he nodded, one of them thumbed the little button.

It was difficult for Richard to tell which was worse; the sound of the explosion or the flash. He felt the pressure wave scratch at his lungs and ears, felt the vibrations in his eyes; smoke and steam issued up and scattered on the wind, leaving a wet steaming crater the size of a large RV camper.

The statue watched impassively as the entrance below her yawned open, a thin river trickling down into its darkness.

Karl looked back at them all and smiled, gently clapping the two technicians on the back. He held back a giggle behind his lips and stepped swiftly to the opening, keeping care to watch his step as he passed through the crater. With a trace amount of hesitation, the others followed suit.

Richard soon found himself beside Karl, and the old German winked at him. "How long ago are we stepping back in time, I wonder?" he said, and Richard only shrugged and smiled beneath his scarf. The opening widened as they neared it, the shadows ready to embrace them until a platoon of flashlights clicked on and chased them away. Their boots echoed along the pyramid's curved walls, seeming as if to taunt them to step closer.

Some in the crowd whistled in appreciation, and some let out a nervous breath. Most, however, were silently awed.

The area was massive, as they had suspected. There were new statues smaller in size than the doorway guardian but greater in stature and mass, broad-shouldered and long-haired giantesses standing at each wall, staring inward. Richard stared up at one in particular, limbs as thick as oak trunks, odd marks on her scowling face. Another had a pleasant expression, curled hair trailing down to her hips, hands clasped together over her long flowing dress.

"They're all different," Piotr said, "and yet they're all alike."

Richard thought he heard Garnet sigh at this, but he couldn't be sure, nor did he care. He was far too captivated to be concerned with anything else. Some in the group turned and shone their lights up above the entrance, noting that the statue was also carved there in perfect mirror image. "Her gaze never leaves you." Karl muttered. "She watches when you enter and when you leave. _Faszinierend_."

"It's like a temple," Julia whispered, and the group turned to each other for confirmation. Could they be truly certain that that was what this was? How could they be, without precedent or comparison? Richard wiped at his nose, feeling very small beneath the statues. The sound of a chisel drew him away, and he saw one of the technicians trying to chip away at the wall of the building. Trying and failing.

"Hey! Look at this," Piotr's voice called from the center of the room. Flashlights instantly swiveled to where he stood, reminding Richard of a rock concert. The beams cast a ghostly light on Piotr, who stood in front of a pedestal. It was short and otherwise featureless, with smooth glassine surfaces and a topped with a slanted slab. Piotr was running his fingers along the sides of the slab, his mouth hanging open in wonder and looking very much like a fish that had been dragged from the water. "It's shaped kind of like a control panel."

The crew gathered around this new feature of the pyramid, or temple, whichever they wished to call it. Richard watched them congregate and wondered just how they were going to categorize anything they find. There was hardly anything here, just empty space and the perpetually leering statues. Feeling the cold inside him heave itself forward, he followed the crew and tried to get a look at the thing. It was curious as it was unremarkable, in that Piotr's "control panel" was featureless. There were no clues as to what it or anything here was.

The crew spent twenty minutes at the odd pedestal, scientifically picking at it and trying to understand what it was and how it worked, why it was shaped the way it was. After that they dissipated, resigned as they were that they could not immediately figure it out. Julia suggested more thermite charges, a shocking admission until it was understood she was being sarcastic. Karl bit his lip and stared up at the figure above the opening as though trying to commune with her for an answer.

Richard, tired and sick, gave the suggestion that they take a break and regroup after they've had coffee. There was much grumbling and arguing that they had just gotten here and would not be defeated after so short a time, but it was decided that it was the best course of action. Looking sullen, the crew headed out of the pyramid in time to witness the last sliver of the sun descend into the icy valley. Stars were blinking down at them, watching like birds of prey. Escaping the cold night, they huddled beneath the tent and rested on mats and chairs they had set up, perusing photographs they had taken within the structure as though seeing them through a two-dimensional plane could give them answers.

Richard coughed and winced. Drinking the coffee was like swallowing pins and razor blades. He asked Karl when the second crew would be coming to meet them. "Twenty-four hours," Karl said bitterly as he sat down and filled his thermos. He looked angry, not expecting his expedition to reach a stalemate this early in, and Richard found himself feeling a fraction of pity for the man.

Time elapsed, though you couldn't be certain that time even existed here. Night fell on the group in a black blanket. The half-moon was hidden by clouds that had been growing since the sun receded, and the thermometer read that it was sixty-six below. Richard watched absently as Hannover was feeding information of the pyramid into a laptop, checking and rechecking the figures to see that they match up. Clearing his throat with a grimace, he shut his eyes and tried to hide further away from the chill beneath his parka.

When he awoke, he heard the scuffling of jackets upon jackets, urgent grunting and furious voices. He jerked himself up off his mat in time to see Hannover Kim reel his arm back and send his fist crashing into one of Karl's technicians. The man's hood flew back, silver blonde hair askew and radiating out like the limbs of an anemone. The man's nose was blooded and his lips peeled back into an animal's snarl before he lunged at the smaller man. The two struggled and tripped on one of the mats, crashing down onto Richard. He shouted and fought to disentangle himself from the two combatants, swearing for the others to come and put an end to the fight.

The black sole of a boot flew up and clipped him on the mouth. He immediately felt warm, coppery fluid dribble down his chin and stain his tongue. He leapt up and away from the thrashing limbs.

"What the hell is all this!?" Karl shouted as he limped forward on his cane. The two men were quickly hauled up and pulled away from each other, hands stretched out into claws towards the other. Kim grunted and aimed a kick high at the man's face, not caring that it was nowhere even close.

Karl stepped in between the two, hoping the fear that they may injure their monetary incentive would quell their fury. " _What_ is the matter now?"

Kim raised an accusing finger to the blonde man. "This maniac destroyed my computer!"

"I never did," shouted the blonde man in a thick Scandinavian lilt.

"I got up to go take a look at the temp charts and I hear this big crash. I came back and this idiot was right there standing over it! I had all our information on there and he destroyed it all!"

" _Lögnare_!"

With renewed hatred the two men lunged forward, and Karl scrabbled backward to get out of their way. It took two other crewmembers each to restrain them. Richard stepped out of the tent, eager to get away from the melee. Karl and the others continued to try and talk the two men down, asking about data backups and other things that he didn't understand, nor cared to, and he stepped out into the snow. A layer of ice had formed beneath the powder, providing an added measure of traction. He looked up at the pyramid, at the grim and silent face of the statue. The blue-white guide lights turned the entire structure a sickly, fluorescent shade of green. It made him think of uranium when viewed under an ultraviolent light.

Movement caught his eye; he had enough time to see Garnet vanish into the impermeable dark. Curiosity piquing, he turned and looked back at the shouting tent, then followed her.

He grabbed for his flashlight but did not turn it on yet. He wasn't sure why he had a sudden urge for snooping. Perhaps it was the anxiety at the prospect of being cooped up with so many people for so long a time, perhaps it was that he had never met a woman as strange and mysterious as Garnet.

Perhaps he wanted to see why she was so interested in this structure, having shown no proclivities for anything else beforehand.

He found her inside, flashlight in hand and trained on the odd pedestal. She ran one hand over its surface, appearing as though they were following definitive lines. "This is impossible," he heard her say, her voice hissing along the walls.

A tickle got into Richard's throat, and his cough was like an explosion multiplied a dozen times against the walls. Garnet jerked away from the column and stared at him, coiled spring energy hiding in her limbs making her look like a lioness ready strike. He winced at the pain in his throat and wiped at his nose. "Sorry," he said, taking out his flashlight and clicking it on. Garnet clenched her fist for a second and let it soften.

 _What were you doing here? What were you looking for?_ he wondered. He spread the light along the pedestal, swiveling it up into grim faces of the statues.

"What do you make of all this?" he asked her, but she gave no reply. Instead, she returned to the pedestal. "Not much of a talker, huh?"

"I think there's a lot that we don't understand," she said. "I think that trying to _uncover secrets_ sounds good in thought, but there are reasons why they're called secrets. I don't think any of us can truly see the dangers."

"What kind of dangers?"

Garnet looked at him, holding his stare until he turned away. He swore in his mind, cursing her peculiarity and how intriguing she was, how odd. She knew something, he knew she did, at least something more than the rest of them did. That she wasn't telling them anything was disconcerting.

It was alarming.

He turned about to look at all the statues and tried to see the answer in them. Eight of them staring inward, all imposing and intimidating, all female. One of them greater than the others, carved higher and more finely than them. The Budapest crystals were colossal to him, but to these figures they would appear quite normal. Was there a puzzle? Was there a trick lever or switch somewhere that led to deeper areas? Or was this it? Was all of this the reason they had come thousands of miles across the planet? A rich old man's folly leading them to—

Richard felt it before he heard it. A deep rumble beneath his feet, rippling up through his bones and making the soft tissues of his eyes and mouth quiver, followed by the whirring noise as that of a gigantic engine coming to life. He turned and saw the pedestal internally lit with some sulfurous light. The top slab seemed to change shape before his eyes, solid matter somehow shifting with glassine fluidity from a rectangle into a triangle. A confusion arrangement of angled lines appeared on the slab for a moment before the pedestal changed shape again. The triangular slab seemed to flow into itself, collecting to a point on the column, and the column lit up with spectacular intensity before disappearing down into the floor.

Light began to emanate throughout the entire pyramid in straight lines, particularly where the walls met and beneath seven of the statues, and more thinly in areas on the floor.

"What happened? What did you do?"

Garnet looked at him and offered an innocent shrug. The floor beneath them lit up in a wide circle centering on where the column had just been, and Garnet leapt at him, dragging him away from the circle before the floor fell away, descending down and down into an unfathomable pit.

She let him go, and together they looked down the hole. Richard watched in fascination as spokes or slabs of crystal slid soundlessly out of the walls, hovering in the air in a series of steps. They spiraled downward, and the light followed them, arcing down the walls. There, finally reaching the bottom some ninety feet down, could be seen a corridor leading to another room. Garnet and Richard looked at each other, then back down into the pit.

A cavalcade of footsteps sounded behind them, automatic fire of rubber soles. The rest of the crew ran into the pyramid, halting the moment they saw the wide pit. "What happened here!?" Karl shouted.

Both Garnet and Richard raised their hands and gave them an innocent shrug.

[ ]

"Watch your step."

"Oh, never mind the rules of chivalry, just hurry up."

Richard smiled as he quickened his pace, Julia practically stepping on his heels. He tried to ignore the odd feeling of stepping on the floating platforms, the expectancy that they might at any moment fall out from underneath him. Above, her could still hear Karl say "Remarkable" over and over again, weaving it like a magick mantra. He wanted desperately to follow them, but his condition made the action difficult and downright painful for him, and so he begrudgingly stayed at the surface. "Get photos," he told them all, "Record everything."

With each step, the platforms fluoresced. Richard felt like a child playing with a light-up musical toy he'd once had, until Julia urged him to move.

Below, Garnet, Kim, and Piotr were already walking through the lower level, their shadows sweeping across the walls. He heard Piotr give a long, impressed whistle, then the subtle whir of a video recorder.

"I can't believe this is actually happening," Julia said, sounding a little out of breath.

"Yeah."

"I mean, how long has it been since feet stepped through these halls?"

"Are you okay?"

As they reached the lower floor, Richard trained his light on Julia's feet, lowlighting her face. She was wheezing with the sound of a punctured tire. Reaching into a jacket pocket, she sucked on an inhaler and paused for a moment, regarding him with an apologetic eye. "Asthma," she said. "Had it since I was twelve. Don't worry about it."

As Julia stepped past him, Richard bit the inside of his cheek. He hated it when people said that, _Don't worry about it_. Usually, it was something you told yourself when it was something to worry about.

Joining the rest of the crew, they followed the tunnel for some time before the walls widened, the ceiling rose, and they realized that they were stepping into a grand hall. There were more statues here propping up the ceiling, each a colossus and holding weapons in a knightly fashion. The floor and the ceiling were each brilliantly lit in spots mirroring the other.

"Perfect symmetry," Kim said as he held the recorder.

"Look at the size of those doors," Julia whispered. Richard paused to stare at the doorway of the far wall, noting that it could not have been less than thirty feet in height.

"We are in agreement that no human hands have built this?" Piotr said, and none of them answered. It was a thought they didn't want to peruse, didn't want to pick at the implications.

"What do you think, Garnet?" Kim asked. Richard looked around for her, saw her crouching low to the floor on one side; concern filling their minds, they all quickly stepped up to her and the what she was prodding with her fingers.

A pile of snow was scattered along the floor, fresh snow, already melting into spreading puddles. Small footsteps led away down the hall to one of the doors. Garnet stood up and took in a deep breath. The look she gave them, vacuous as it was, was confirmation enough to their initial worries; they were not the only party here. They continued on, sticking closer together.

Piotr had been mapping the area with a bulky sonar machine, looking very much like nineteenth century camera; by pressing a button on the side of the machine, a high-decibel sound wave was launched, bounced off the walls, and returned to the device, feeding it spatial information. After a moment, he pointed to one of the giant doorways. "Let's go in that direction."

" _No_. Let's go this way."

Everyone stared at Garnet, who was already walking to the eastern door. Julia tried to tell her to hold on a minute, to give them all a reason why they should go to one door when any of them seemed reasonable, but Garnet would not answer her. She walked at a quick pace, and the others, rattled as they were, followed.

Richard saw more of the squiggly, jumbled lines glowing above the doorway as they entered it. Whatever the symbols meant, since he was now convinced they were symbols, was lost on him as he tried to figure out what was going on.

Garnet managed to open the doors while Kim assisted her, though Richard didn't doubt she could have done it on her own. The shadows greeted them momentarily before light flew from the hall and into this new room. They followed it, and their eyes widened at the pyramid's new gift. Richard, who had once worked as a laboratory assistant years ago, recognized the room from its shape and placement, its sterility and uniform, utilitarian style. But what impressed him was the machinery; seemingly ominous and foreboding contraptions were set up high onto the ceiling; thick corkscrew-tubing plunged into crystal vats and filled them with curious liquids ranging in color from blue to red, and any shade in between. An enormous device that reminded him of the basic structure of a virus stood on sharp steel legs, its body a huge length of liquid-spattered glass. Whatever its past role had been, it now looked to take on the role of a relic, seeing as it had been placed on a raised dais away from the other machinery. All of these had fallen into disrepair ages ago, though everything seemed to be perfectly preserved by the ancient air down here.

Octagonal alcoves had been hewn into the crystal and sealed off by some dense glassine window. To Richard, they resembled the cages or cells reserved for research animals. Indeed, beside each window was a faintly glowing scribble, each one vaguely different. Some windows held dark shapes behind them, but the opacity of the windows made it difficult if not impossible for them to know what lay there.

"It's a laboratory," Julia said aloud, and she laughed, thoroughly delighted. The others remained silent, imbued as they were with the grandiosity of the room, dwarfed by the devices it contained. They busied themselves with trying to understand what they were looking at, what the devices were and what their functions was, reaching no conclusion as they walked in a group. Richard imagined what they looked like from above, seeing a classroom tour group oohing and aahing over things they didn't understand, and likely wouldn't any time soon.

They wandered around the opaque windows and tried to see what was beyond them. Failing that, they studied the contraptions mounted in the ceiling, knowing they couldn't know anything from so far a distance. They walked to the vats that had been arranged every five feet, huge tubs approximately eight feet in length, three feet wide, and a good six feet high, and Julia took out a plastic bottle from her jacket. "They obviously didn't care whether anything spilled or not."

"It could be dangerous," Richard commented. "I mean, it might be acid or something."

"They wouldn't leave a tub filled with acid lying around without any kind of covering. And we can rule out infectious diseases, I think. Here, boost me up."

Garnet made a grim sound in her throat, but made no motion to stop them. Julia stood on Piotr and Richard's hands, quickly scooping a generous amount of the liquid into the bottle. Richard expected it to be thick and syrupy, something weird, but it resembled water. "Twenty bucks says this is an undiscovered element," Julia said, holding the bottle up to the light.

"You're on," Piotr said with a nervous bettor's grin. Julia shook his hand and returned his smile.

Richard wiped his gloved hands on his jacket. He made as if to follow the group when once again he found himself obeying the funny tingling feeling that crept up the nape of his neck, startling the fine brown hair there. Garnet had vanished again. He didn't know how she did it, but she seemed to be able to do it very well.

There, her tactical suit like a sliver of congealed shadow, moving quickly to a shorter doorway placed between two of the windowed alcoves. His mind flooded with a mixture of anger and fear and, without sparing a glance at the rest of the crew, began following her. She knew something, he knew she did, and her silence was maddening.

Nothing about this place was right, nothing about it sane. Composed within its walls and staining the snow that surrounded it was everything that stole his sleep away, everything that made him want to scream like a rabbit caught in a snare. He was going to get an answer, right _now_.

The door shut behind her, he opened it again. It was a long corridor, lower than the rest of the structure and seemingly puny compared to the previous rooms. Thick coiled glass tubing snaked out of the walls and scattered along the floor, likely transported fluids or materials from other sections in the pyramid, empty and dead now. Garnet ignored these as she continued to walk quickly, with a determined purpose, like she knew where she was going.

"Hey!"

Garnet spared him a glance, sneered in annoyance but did not stop.

"Wait just one damn minute—"

"Go back, Richard. Turn back now before things get any worse."

He caught up with her, grabbing her roughly by the shoulder and twisting her around. Regretting it a moment later; she grabbed his arm and twisted it upward until he was certain the ulna would snap like a chicken bone. He looked up at her in mingled surprise and fear, listening to a voice that was strained against clenched teeth.

"Richard…"

"What do you know about this place, Garnet? I _know_ you know something! You have to tell us before something bad happens!"

"That we're here right now is bad enough! This place has to be destroyed!"

"Why!? What is this place to you? What's going on here?"

Richard was certain that if Garnet were to place any more pressure on his arm, it would soon resemble a mess of hamburger. She glared down at him, a look that he tried to mirror. During the pause in the argument, the sound of footsteps echoed along the walls, stunning them out of their anger, for the footsteps were not coming from the laboratory doorway behind them.

"Is that you, Onyx? Did we win the war? I bet we did…Wait, why didn't you shut the door?"

Garnet let go of Richard's arm and the both of them stared as a figure emerged from one of the doorways ahead, wiping a greasy black liquid from her hands with a ragged cloth. She had for the most part the build of a human but was proportionally smaller, perhaps four feet in height, with light green skin and triangular-shaped hair a lighter, yellowish shade of green. The figure was dressed in an odd sleeveless black suit with a large yellow diamond design on the front. Richard noticed a large green-yellow stone set _into_ the back of the figure's right hand. The figure continued to speak, unaware of their presence until stopping a few yards from them. The sight of them cut her off in mid-sentence and froze her in mid-step. Her eyes, also a shade of green, became very wide and her mouth dropped open.

Richard felt like fainting, likely would have were it not for the chill coming down from the upper levels. Another fantasy become real, another splinter of hallucination that wasn't at all a hallucination. He rubbed at his stinging arm, certain the bruise already swelling.

The green figure's eye twitched. Garnet took a step forward—

The next moment, something happened that Richard found difficult to acknowledge. He saw the little figure raise her hands together, the air between her fingertips quivering. She made a pushing motion toward the two of them, and an instant later there was a blinding explosion of emerald light and white sparks. Richard threw up his arms to shield his eyes as he ducked down, fireflies flickering behind his lids, hearing two pairs of footsteps echoing down the corridor.

[ ]

 **Notes for Chapter 4/ First Assault:**

 **Finally things are kicking off. There's action and tension as the characters make their first assault on the pyramid, which seems to be some sort of research facility like their own, and which we can see is not uninhabited (gasp!). Yellow Diamond's face looms large over the bottom of the world, and our characters are still filled with the hope of uncovering new discoveries in her territory, not knowing what they're getting into.**

 **[If you're confused (not that you would be, but just in case), the Peridot shown is not our Peridot; she's an Era 1 Gem, and therefore possessed of innate abilities. To cement that this is a different Gem, her gemstone is set in a different place on her body]**


	5. Chapter 5

V  
Little Green Women

 _The world just broke apart, and the cracks are chasing me._

Tears were pooling in the Peridot's eyes as she ran down the hallway. She knew she could have fought back the invaders, but necessity superseded bravery; survival was the only compunction on which she functioned now. Fear-laced adrenaline coursed through her and made her limbs light and airy, made every detail of the world sharper and brighter, as if it mattered. None of it mattered anymore.

In her entire existence, she had never known sadness. Though she could not put the word to its function, she comprehended it well enough. That _they_ were here now meant that the war had been lost, that the Diamonds had abandoned them. It meant that Onyx was never coming back.

"Get back here!"

The Peridot darted between two thick pipes, supply tubes that carried the essential vitamins and minerals to the lowest chamber in the pyramid. She swerved to push open a door, another hallway, kicked open a hatch on the left wall, and slipped down into the mess that had been relegated to serve as an all-purpose storeroom. She fell hard onto the floor, feeling nothing, but did not move. She heard feet from the fusion pounding the crystal floor above her, heard the soft steps of the human with it, heard them exclaim in anger and proceed down the hall, looking for a new way to get to her.

 _They're going to kill me. They wouldn't have sent the Fusion if they didn't. They want me shattered._

Though the footsteps receded and faded away, she did not move, did not blink, just stared up at the hatchway, expecting something to burst through and claim her. When the sounds of the intruders passed and the Antarctic silence that she had become accustomed to returned, she allowed herself to inhale the cold, cold air, and inhale the memories that were only memories. Silently, the Peridot crawled into a corner of the room, covered herself with spare tube coils and broken crystal panes, and began to cry. She pulled her legs up to her chest and buried her head in her hands and wept. Whatever these new feelings were, they were crushing her, ripping her out from the inside.

She didn't picture it to be like this, couldn't have imagined that this is where the future would take her. She had had doubts, certainly, but none so deep as this. She had always hoped that if she stuck to her work, kept her mind and her body trained to the task of keeping the facility running properly, then Onyx would come back. The stupid war would be over, her Diamond would congratulate them all, and she and Onyx would come back. For time beyond her knowledge the loneliness gnawed at her; ever since the Ambers had all been recycled ages ago, it had been she and her protector, and when she left for to fight the wicked subversives, it was only little Peridot. Just a little Peridot, walking the cold dark corridors and the laboratories of the facility. From her hiding spot, the shadows congealed into recollection, as they so often do, and Peridot felt her throat constrict, choking back her sobs.

"I'll come back," Onyx had said, hefting her mace over her shoulder, short nightdark hair quivering and cold-stiff, giving her that look that made her knees weak. Peridot stomped her foot and pouted, crossing her arms and tried to look tough.

"Just what am I going to do here? Maintain and operate all these machines by myself?"

"Hey, that's a good idea. Why don't you try that?"

She turned away, stomped her foot harder on the floor. "Oh, don't patronize me, Onyx!"

"I'm not patronizing you. I'm just telling you that that's a good idea."

She felt a hand cup the curve of her shoulder, big hand with a smooth dark surface. A hand that had helped to destroy worlds but would never harm her, never, would only ever keep her safe. Peridot wanted Onyx to feel bad for leaving her alone, so she ignored the impulse to embrace that hand and never let it go. She closed her eyes and tried to remember this, all of this, this touch at this moment.

"I wish I could go with you," Peridot said.

"I know you do, and nothing makes me prouder of you. But you know you have to stay here. It's what Yellow Diamond wants, and besides, it would just kill me if I saw you fall on the battlefield."

"You think I'm not strong enough?"

She turned around and scowled up at the face, at that face, but the scowl melted when she saw Onyx's soft smile. "Actually, I think you're a lot stronger than I am."

They stared at each other for a time she couldn't calculate, didn't bother. Better to be lost in this second looking at each other than face the next one lost in uncertainty.

"What is this planet doing to us?" Peridot asked. She didn't want to say "us," but she had allowed it to slip out; it was what she really meant, anyway.

And Onyx leaned down and held her, powerful embrace, and Peridot felt that the smile she had on her face would never fade away. Stars would be born and die out, suns gestated and collapsed into their dark tombs, and her smile would still be there. "I'll come back," Onyx said, love-whispered, and she left the temple, left Peridot's world.

Now only a memory, a memory tainted and transmogrified into a sharp and questing limb of sadness. Peridot sniffled and wiped at her eyes as she tried to huddle further into the corner, to become as small as possible. "Don't go away," she said, feeling stupid for talking out loud to no one, to nothing, to herself. "Don't go."

Looking up at the hatchway, seeing Onyx's face projected into the shadows. "Don't leave me alone."

The sadness entered her mind like a tide and washed away everything else. After a time, when it began to recede, it left a hole big enough for another new emotion to take hold: Despair. She had always hoped that tomorrow would bring her its reward, finally give Peridot her due, but now, with the invaders taking command of the facility, with the Diamonds' persistent silence, with her love gone (gone gone gone), she could see the truth now. There was no more future for her. The world she had known was cold and dark, and why should the rest be any different?

The humans have a concept that was alien to her, something they called the "spirit." Acknowledging that concept, there would be a chance that wherever her spirit drifted when she was gone it would find its way to Onyx. But on the other hand, she knew just how useful wishing and hoping had been so far. The tears did not cease flowing, but she found no more reason to sob. She stared up into the shadows of the ceiling and the memories they contained.

The realization struck her, throat cringing and another wave of silent tears pushed out from underneath her lids. There was only one thing for her to do now. If she really valued her life and Onyx's life, then she would do it. And nothing was going to stop her.

Quietly wiping away her tears, Peridot pushed away the coils of tubing and crystal and looked around the room. She was sure there had been some bits of metal she had stored here for a cleaning day—though much of the pyramid's equipment had been built to survive extreme pressures, many of the joints in the pipework were vulnerable to fracturing, and she found that soldering the joints with metal scavenged from abandoned camps and stations worked wonders. Sniffling, she found something. It looked like a giant metal arrow, huge curved blade, an engraving of a whale on both sides. She grabbed it, tested its weight. It was much too long to carry quietly, but she snapped it off and half-mast. Satisfied, she listened to the silence and, very tentatively, began to emerge from her hole.

She looked left, looked right, glanced high above, trusting nothing. Keeping her body adjacent to the walls, she slunk off down the corridor, following a route she had taken often. She had been slacking recently because the pipes had been needing service, but she could not forget.

Peridot had been made to serve two functions; to keep the pyramid running at optimum capacity, and to become the failsafe for the weapon, the secret gestating in the deep womb of the pyramid. She knew she had failed at one of those two, but the other was still within her reach.

In her hopelessness, even despair was washed away, and gave way to an emotion that was as natural as life itself. Anger. She felt hatred for the ones that took Onyx away from her, hate for the Diamonds for telling her nothing, surely had forgotten about her. Anger for those skulking around her precious pale yellow world, hunters sniffing her out. Anger for the war that ruined her life, secreted away from it though she was. Anger holding hands with sorrow. She gripped the harpoon tightly, holding it outward, hands balled into fists and unaware that her hands were shaking.

 _One thing to do now. I'll do it, Onyx, I'll do it for us._

She passed wall after wall, not bothering to read the words scrawled on the thin crystal plaques set along them. Rooms that no longer held meaning, no more purpose. Only one room existed now, and the halls that led to it. Her womb, and her tomb.

The darkness vanished, light scattering across the pyramid's walls as the sector opened up. It was built to do that when a majority of personnel were in the area. Peridot panicked, sticking close to the wall, holding the harpoon across her chest. She waited, eyes trained hard on a spot at the opposite wall, listening to the sound of footsteps coming closer, disgusting rubber soles that made an obnoxious sound on the beautiful crystal floor, _click-clack_ of steel cleats. Closer, and she held in a breath. Closer, and her eye twitched, bare reflexive motion as she fought to control herself.

 _Flee—_

 _Don't run, don't give them your position. Wait, just wait—_

 _They're coming—_

 _I hate them all—_

The footsteps stopped, voices babbled about things they didn't understand, and vanished down the other end of the corridor. Ghost voices fading into Antarctic silence. Peridot let out the breath she had been holding and very slowly stepped to the end of the wall. She tilted her head, one emerald eye observing the bright area for signs of movement.

Nothing. Her upper lip curled in disgust, imagining the droves that must be pouring into the facility by now. No doubt they were picking over all of the instruments, all of the machines, trying to ascertain secrets they would never know. She walked quickly forward, resting the harpoon head on her shoulder. They were all going to—

"Hey!"

Peridot didn't turn, didn't look to see who shouted or where they called from. She didn't recognize the voice, and that meant it was the enemy. She broke into a quick sprint, hearing boots pad the floor behind her.

Didn't matter anyway. She was getting closer to her destination. To _all_ of their destinations, in fact.

She ran as quickly as she could, grunting as her anger and grief forced themselves to the front, friends urging her to pump her feet faster.

A hand, soft fleshy warm hand, fell through the air and latched onto her arm. Disgusting feeling, to be gripped by that hand. "Hang on a minute!" the voice said, out of breath itself. The hate filled her right arm and she swung it as she turned to face her assailant. She felt the harpoon's blade connect with something soft, sound of tearing fabric ripping through the air. A lightly bearded face, perspiring red face, grimaced, grunted, and fell backward. Problem met and dealt with, Peridot quickly turned away from the figure and kept running.

Down one hall and through another, the floor angled slightly downward with each twist. Barely noticeable to those who were not trained to notice such things. She leapt between two more pipes, rolling as gracefully as she could before kicking off the floor and leaping for the doorway, right there, the small and oh-so unassuming white crystal doors.

She noticed the shadow on the floor a moment before the figure fell right in front of her. The impact knocked her back, made her fall down onto her rear, harpoon clattering away, compass arrow pointing to her fate. The Fusion stood up, abomination of her race, and she could see the two gemstones in her palms, radiating power. Awful, terrible power. A hand reached out and snatched her by the forearm, hauling her up into the air so she could look into its eyes, or where she imagined its eyes to be; it wore thick, mirrored spectacles. "There's nowhere you can run to," it said, voice like a glacier waiting to break apart.

Peridot did not, _would_ not, give her captors any happiness. Snarling with all the ferocity she could conjure, she raised the hand that was unencumbered, air whispering between her fingertips, and let loose another blinding emerald flash in the Fusion's face. It cried out, hands releasing, hands flying up to its face, and Peridot quickly sprinted past it. She picked up her harpoon from off the floor and headed for the doors, toward the only form of salvation that existed now.

The doors opened for her and she didn't bother shutting them behind her. She kept her eyes up; heights made her dizzy. The room was vast though it was in no way empty space. A dozen pipes ran from the upper floors through the ceiling and down into a series of complex and streamlined filtering system at the center of the room, glowing faintly in inactivity, which then split into smaller tubes which ran down into the pool below. The pool was circular as the room was circular, and took up the entirety of the floor, consisting of a viscous biochemical soup and stained as red as human blood. A series of pegs were arranged in a circle just above the pool; once activated, the light in the room would dim and the pool would be sealed twice over, once with the pegs and again with thick sheets of impregnable crystal sheets, defenses implemented to ensure against the threat of contaminants entering and ruining the ongoing project. Peridot moved quickly along the higher of the two catwalks that stretched above the pool. She stopped halfway and put her hands on the thin crystal railing, stared down, down, all the way down into the pool. When she looked down, she saw a great crimson eye, the filtering system its pupil, the pool its iris and sclera. It stared at her, watched what she would do.

Funny thing. She found she wasn't so dizzy this time.

The door burst open, and the Fusion ran into the room. One hand was clamped to one half of her face, scorch-steam rising in a tight cloud about her head. Her expression was locked in a stricken look of rage. It didn't scare Peridot. Nothing scared her anymore. Her hatred had been greater, and had already burned away everything, burned itself out, leaving only this final next step. Peridot watched in distant amusement as the Fusion stepped to her, shouted something she didn't bother with hearing, began running towards her.

Peridot turned away.

She closed her eyes. Onyx smiled at her on the back of her lids, and she smiled, too.

She pressed the blade of the harpoon against her stomach.

Push, release.

In the resulting explosion of dust particles and not unpleasant smoke, Garnet could barely make out a little green-yellow gemstone, catching the sulfurous light and casting it back into a thousand stars as it tumbled through the air, down and down. When it finally landed into the pool, it didn't even make a sound.

[ ]

 **Notes for Chapter 5/ Little Green Women:**

 **Apart from Lovecraftian horror and dark fantasy, I feel that tragic romance is one of my stronger literary points. We are given plenty of information about the deepest levels of the pyramid, indeed, shown the facility's purpose. I was very pleased with this chapter when I wrote it, though it just seems a bit short to me. My reasoning for the relationship between a Peridot and an Onyx is that, being so very far away from the Gem Homeworld and therefore further away from its rigidly enforced rules, those rules are more likely to be broken, as control is less efficient. I refer to cases in history when the prevailing nations tried to enforce control and those countries farthest away from them were more susceptible to breaking free.**

 **There are a number of logical issues I can't help but put forth here [I get a kick out of putting myself down]. I feel that you cannot condense an entire world of emotions, an entire relationship between two characters, cannot make the reader feel for a character you want them to feel for in 2,710 words. This chapter was rather short in my mind, though I'll leave that up to you. Also, why would Yellow Diamond leave only one soldier here to watch over one technician? Obviously in the past there were many others, but the way the chapter was written makes it appear as though it had only ever been these two, and there is mention of multiple Ambers (I'll explain that later). I don't outright detail Onyx's appearance (I'm sure there are hundreds of stories involving Onyxes as varied as their writers, and even in my own fanfiction Onyxes vary in general design. I seem to view them as especially skilled in shapeshifting and deception, obvious compliments to Gem soldiery) because I prefer to have the reader come up with their own image. Another thing, in a previous chapter it is shown that Garnet notices a puddle of melting snow in the atrium of the pyramid, and yet the Peridot was shown exiting a deeper level and wiping gunk off her hands. It was intended that Peridot occasionally leaves the pyramid to salvage scrap from nearby abandoned whaling and scientific stations, but the way I wrote made it seem like a mistake.**

 **There are no villains in Steven Universe, just characters that are aware that they are the heroes of their own realities. And that's one reason why I love it so much.**


End file.
